Medical Center names Stanford doctor as new president

Updated 9:22 pm, Friday, September 7, 2012

The Texas Medical Center is pleased to announce that Dr. Robert Robbins of Stanford University has been appointed Texas Medical Center president effective Nov. 5. Photo by The Texas Medical Center

The Texas Medical Center is pleased to announce that Dr. Robert Robbins of Stanford University has been appointed Texas Medical Center president effective Nov. 5. Photo by The Texas Medical Center

Medical Center names Stanford doctor as new president

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The corporation that manages the Texas Medical Center has selected a California heart surgeon as its new president and CEO.

Dr. Robert Robbins, chairman of cardiothoracic surgery at Stanford University's School of Medicine, will assume the presidency of the Texas Medical Center Corp. on Nov. 5, one year after current TMC head Richard Wainerdi announced he will be stepping down.

"I have great respect and admiration for what takes place in the Texas Medical Center, and I'm humbled to have been selected and entrusted with this leadership position," Robbins said in a statement.

Robbins was selected from a pool of 24 candidates, TMC Board of Directors Chairman David Underwood said in a news release. Underwood chaired the presidential search committee.

The corporation, which was deeded 134 acres of land purchased by Houston citizens for a medical center in 1943, oversees the common areas of the medical center campus, including private railway construction and parking structures. But it also has governing authority it invoked in 1995 to stop St. Luke's Episcopal hospital from turning over hospital management to a for-profit company and in 2005 to allow Methodist Hospital to partner with Cornell University's New York City-based medical school.

Tripled in size

Wainerdi has been TMC president since 1984, a time of incredible growth in the medical complex south of downtown. The complex, the world's largest, tripled in physical size and grew from 31 institutions to 52 during Wainerdi's tenure. It is the equivalent of the nation's 11th-biggest downtown.